I’ve been luckily enough to study with Thomas Lux, Dorriane Laux, Joseph Millar, Carol Ann Duffy (Poet Laureate of Great Britain), and others. And because I’m somewhat of a workshop and open mic junkie, I started a monthly critique group in Atlanta and a writers' night out in the Blue Ridge Mountains. I’m also lucky that my poetry collection, Untying the Knot (Aldrich Press, 2014) has been called “a courageous, deeply human book” and my poems have appeared in Atlanta Review, Poetry East, Atticus Review, The Southern Poetry Anthology V: Georgia (Texas Review Press), and many other places.

​I Found Mountains

from the deck of a rented cabin on Lake Chatuge,learned to listen to the ridges of Western North Carolina,heard their constancy, sensed them standing therebreathing on amaranthine evenings.

I’m a Michigan girl who came late to the Blue Ridge.Grew up in flat country, a craver of Great Lakes beaches,Florida oceans. Coaxed by waves on white coasts,long views to nowhere.

Now the blue water view from my own Chatuge windowtakes me to soft peaks and stark balds,tree lines defined on clear days, sometimes a smoky cosmos.No wonder the vastness inspires oneness in monks and poets.Some say faith can move mountains,but mountains move me.